


Boxes

by Achicleos



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Drug Abuse, Gen, The usual suspects - Freeform, guess who this stars?, rating may change if this becomes A Real Thing, thats right folks I never shut up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 22:50:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7864579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achicleos/pseuds/Achicleos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which boxes are not empty and rooms are too quiet, in which people are bigger on the inside and not a single person makes sense. In which you can try to make sense of them anyway, because it's a people thing. </p><p>OR</p><p>The adventures of Jack and the Foxes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_One pill makes you bigger, one makes you smaller. One will send you through the galaxies, to stop by each planet and greet the things you don't know; one won't move you at all. You'll move so slow you're convinced you were just a concept, a dream, nothing of substance. You can't even feel it when your gut clenches and spills into the floor, too late to save you. The pill and its casing has already seeped like acid into the walls of your stomach. Even if you wanted to feel again, it's too late. You're already reduced down to a clammy forehead pressed to a cold tiled floor._

Jack wondered if anyone really woke from nightmares like they did on TV. Did other people really burst upright in flurry of hair and sheets? Did they not lie stiff as the dead as he did? Maybe it was a side affect of the kick. Sometimes Jack was convinced everything was a side affect. From the funny position he slept in to the rigid way he woke, expecting the rancid smell of his own unwashed body and last night's round of stomach fluid under his nose. He always showered a little longer than necessary, just in case. 

It had been many years since he'd taken a pill for the kick. The last time he took a painkiller was in front of someone who made him forget, just for a minute, the feeling of tablets on his tongue. Of course it wasn't really her, it was the amount of pain his legs were in, but that was her fault, too. The stupid stretches she'd showed him had pulled a muscle in his leg. For just a moment, he forgot that part of himself that he should have said no for, and somehow it worked. They were just painkillers. 

Later, after he told Sheena about it, Sheena laughed in his face and called him desperate. _Maybe you really do want attention! Letting yourself give in in like that. Watch, next you'll be popping pills left and right just cause you wanted to play with the big kids._

Sheena wasn't really wrong and that was why Jack sent her flying from his room with the door in her face. She didn't bring it back up, but now Jack itched every time he talked to Allison in front of her. It was as though Sheena were watching him with something like smugness, something like jealousy, but greener. Stickier. Nothing Jack wanted to get caught in. 

Now as he lay in bed, he wondered where Alexander, his dorm mate, was. It was unsettling to sleep in a room with no sounds from another stirring being. He'd had to share the bedroom at his uncle's house with his cousins, who snored and shuffled and made all sorts of sounds Jack had grown so accustomed to he only now noticed they weren't part of the natural world. 

It was a strange thing to miss sound. One could assume it was loneliness Jack felt but really it was just something to fall back asleep to. The comfort that his heavy, heated, living body was not the only one in the room, and that if his haunted dreams ever came to life, someone else would know. Now, as he stared at the shadowy cave of Alexander's empty bunk, he hated Alexander. An inadvertent dependency on his presence had creeped up on Jack and now he wasn't sure how to get rid of it. It wasn't even the mysterious Russian that he wanted, for he knew Alexander by name and jersey number at most, but just to hear him breath as a safety net. A reminder that if the person sleeping across the room is alive, he must be, too. 

It was stranger yet to look out the window, to find no moon, to not feel real. 

Because the quiet was louder than his heart had ever been and he needed to move before his joints ached, Jack threw back the sheets and placed his feet on the floor to feel the cold of it seep into their soles. His dream was forgotten but his mind was nowhere on the premises. It no longer mattered that there was an ache just behind his eyes or in the pit of his stomach; he felt like making some noise. 

Long ago, after his hands stopped shaking and leg stopped twitching and the cravings curbed, he discovered that the effects of the pills themselves never really left. They lingered beneath the depths and bubbled to the surface from time to time, only never as good as they had been. The feeling that used to take away feeling left him empty indescribably, as though he were never there enough to be full, let alone empty. But it didn't take long to realize this was a high he could break out of. Noise, feeling, focus. He could do sit-ups or accidentally end up in front of the wrong face and get angry or he could run a tap and listen. Here, he was tired in a way sleep would not fix. He didn't feel like doing any of those things. 

He wondered if Alexander was asleep, wherever he was. 

Jack pulled on his shoes and a sweatshirt and left his room with the door unlocked and the keys on the counter. He noticed a vividly changing light under the doorway of Andrew and company's room but heard nothing; he walked on the balls of his feet passed regardless. The last thing he wanted to see at this hour was any of them. Not even Kevin, who would only scold him for being awake at all. 

Not much was open in the area around that time but he knew of a few 24 hour diners not five blocks down the road. But, no, he left his wallet with his keys. Feeling betrayed, his stomach complained but it was too late to go back as he stood outside the tower. Just a walk then. 

It truly was a deadened night. There was no moon and the city was too bright for many stars to appear. When Jack was younger, he used to sit out back his uncle's place and count the stars until the migraines gave up. He wondered what part of himself he'd traded to stop the migraines altogether, as surely nothing so painful left without a price. Sometimes, he looked inside himself and left too quickly to see what was missing. It was not yet somewhere he wanted to be. 

Someone jogged passed him on the road. The music they played bounced in time with their breath, coming hard in the soundless night. Jack's ear followed the beat coming from the man's earphones. It might have been beneficial to get a new music player since he smashed the last. He'd only had it three months and cracked the screen some time in the first week, but in those months he never had to leave bed to get tired in a sleepy way again or blow the smoke from his brain and feel real. His mind lit up with sound and sound became colors, and suddenly it was a dream, not a nightmare, and then it was morning, and he was okay. 

Jack snorted to himself. Sheena had asked what kind of music he listened to just the day before. He'd never crossed a person off the list of people he might tell faster; Sheena listened to loud, raging music, with voices like rattling chicken wire. Nothing like his tastes. The last thing he needed was another thing for her to mock him for. 

A car drove by, rustling the leaves of the branches above and the litter on the street. He watched red taillights fade and then turn into the distance and thought about when he should start saving for a car. It wasn't as though there was anywhere to go with one. He was stuck at Palmetto until his uncle sent tickets to bring him home for vacation. It wouldn't be safe at home, what with having to get used to an empty room. In his chest a heated breath caught, swelling like a wad of gum and spit, frustration thick enough to fill his lungs like fluid. _Don't be so reliant_. He felt like maroon, a tainted red. 

He came upon a new road, ten or so blocks from the Tower and turned left. There were still many signs lit up, inviting students to study and party goers to ease their drunken state. The unreality had passed without his notice and now the world was tangible yet surreal as he looked in the windows of open diners with actual people inside. The sun was so far away but people had long since stopped being afraid of the dark. 

It took all of five more minutes of walking but he came across a diner that was not important, nor was the couple going in. It was the woman coming out that caught Jack's eye. She was tall even without the heels and bright without the sun. He wondered how she did it, but he didn't think he'd ever be able to understand. 

Having the advantage of seeing Allison first meant he could slip away unnoticed but she was already turning towards him and he was wearing bright orange with his name lettered on the back. It did not take long for her to notice. When she did, she stopped. There was a pause in the moment, like she too was collecting herself. Tonight's outfit was a lot more modest than usual, and as she stared doe eyed across the lot at him, he was glad she hadn't worn heels. He did not like vulnerability, he did not like confronting it in the dark, and he especially didn't like confronting women, afraid, in the dark. Anger flared at himself for a reason he could not place, and shame followed it like a hunting dog. 

Allison was quicker than he. Her smile was camera ready despite her matching sweats; hers were gray, much more practical then his state of being a traffic cone; as she was always prepared to look presentable to someone. That was the first time he'd ever caught Allison by surprise, even if for a moment. That was not all– it was the first time he'd caught Allison unmade. 

He'd been far too slow, something Neil and Kevin and everyone else would agree with. She was walking towards him, and the closer she got the more he saw that the smile was dimmer than from far away. His mind supplied that this was the same with stars. 

"What are you doing here?" Allison asked. It was refreshing to hear a voice on such a night as that one. 

"Standing. What are you doing here?"

"Couldn't sleep." Allison eyed Jack. She wasn't taller by much; Jack was what Neil liked to describe as all-around average; but she was just enough to eye him down. "You couldn't sleep either?"

There was no harm in saying no, but that felt like an invitation to keep talking. He pulled a face as if to say, whatever. Allison's flat look in return told him she understood. "Okay," she said, "well don't get lost on the way back."

It was infuriating that she was walking passed him, then away, smelling faintly of warm food and the expensive perfume that tickled his nose. The night was not lonely but it was far too quiet and Allison was all but. Even he did not know what he was doing when he called, "I came out to get tired again."

She stopped, turned, and of course she knew. She'd expected him to cave and if Jack was anything, let it be predictable. In his defense he was learning fast that Allison would know either way. 

"Walk with me then," Allison told him, walking passed him once more without waiting for him to follow. 

Maybe it was the moonless night, as though he could hide this in the shadows of the world and never admit that it was better the have someone than no one. Maybe it was just Allison. Either way, it was not unpleasant to stroll down the deserted streets with Allison. She did not talk nearly as much as he expected nor did she expect anything in return. Content to point out weird things on the street or when dogs started chain barking, Allison didn't push, and she didn't give. They simply walked. 

A park found Jack's legs tired. At a bench Jack sat down and waited for Allison to realize he was no longer beside her. The click of her tongue was chastising but not annoyed, and that was annoying in itself. He often wondered what it took to reach within her and pull out the part that hated him. It couldn't be that his grasp was short because he had dealt with far bigger threats than her but still, it was like he hit a wall. Like he was reaching into an empty box. But the box was not empty, his reach was not short. The only other explanation he refused to believe: he was holding himself back.

Allison slumped beside him. She was tired but he was not, so they'd kept walking. Her tired was different though, the kind that was weighted but would not consume you, the kind that sat on your brain but would not wash you in sleep. Her tired couldn't be helped by walking. 

"Do you want to know why I was at Sadie's?"

Sadie's was the diner. He did not want to know. Her face was half in shadow, a broken Greek statue. There was nothing about the way she looked saying that name that felt familiar. He nodded. 

"Seth used to take me there. They make really nice bacon cheeseburgers- or he thought so. They're disgusting. But when I need to feel closer to him, I go there and get a burger. It's good to remember that he wasn't really lost, not with me. He wasn't just an overdose suicide or a pawn for someone else's game. One time he tried to eat three burgers one sitting and ended up throwing up." Allison rested her elbow on her knee and her chin in her palm. She was smiling. Her eyes flickered over to Jack, reminding him he was there. "He did it again the next day because he thought I thought he couldn't do it."

Jack wasn't sure what to say. Everything he knew about Seth Gordon came from news articles and gossip. And, of course, when Allison brought him up, which was always rare and tender in a way Jack left her alone with. This memory meant more to Allison than it ever could to Jack, but he felt it's weight, he could see the rosy hues at its edges. 

He wasn't going to speak, but he asked, "Where would you be now if Seth was alive?"

The shadows on Allison's face shifted as her head tilted in her palm, making her features graver, intensifying her thoughtful grace. Allison had practiced being looked at her entire life but Jack thought that this was his favorite part. When she was surprised. 

"In bed," she said with finality. "Sleeping. Maybe Seth would be there, maybe he wouldn't. Sometimes he just wasn't. But I'd still sleep." 

Jack wondered where he would be. If he would have gotten lost walking, if he would have found this park. It had been Allison to lead him there, or maybe they were following each other and hoped for the best. It couldn't be safe to blindly follow someone and assume they knew where they were going, but lately Jack hadn't been looking straight ahead. Lately he looked out for obstacles in paths that weren't his own. 

"Why are you out here, Jack?" Allison asked. She sounded fainter, perhaps more affected by the thought of Seth than he could see. 

"I couldn't sleep."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Just felt weird. I get nightmares or whatever and weird shit happens afterwards, like I'm high without the buzz or the fun part. Probably crazy," Jack said in a rush and a puff of laughter. It was about as light hearted as a moonless sky. There was a strange taste in his mouth at giving in, like rust but not as red. 

Once again the shadows shifted, following the curves of Allison's smile. "You're not crazy. A little weird," she admitted. 

He snorted and elbowed her, knocking her head off her chin. 

"Asshole," she muttered after catching herself in time from falling over herself. "Maybe you're hungry. Have you tried eating?"

"What is it with you and eating?"

"Don't be shitty, baby fox."

"Don't call me that."

"Then don't be shitty," she retorted. 

"Whatever. No, I haven't eaten. Forgot."

Allison clicked her tongue, this time not withholding her disapproval. The breeze picked up as she spoke, carrying her words around and around in his head. "You won't feel better if you let yourself go like that."

 _Tell me something I don't know_. Allison could be terrifying when she wanted to be. Looking at him with concern and dismay like she was, he was frozen despite the heat under his arms. He looked into indecipherable tangle of trees and shadow leading further into the park instead, wondering if they were on a similar looking path. Allison was pushing too hard for something Jack couldn't wrap his head around so he pushed back with all he knew how to and she just took it as a challenge. He didn't want to be a code to be cracked. 

Sheena never did this. She showed up and expected to be treated like shit and then returned it and that was that. Easy. Allison wasn't having any shit exchanged nor was she budging, and Jack was at a standstill what to do next. 

"Come on," Allison chirped, pulling him from his thoughts. She used his knee as leverage to stand. 

"Where?"

"To get you something to eat. I know a place that makes a killer cheeseburger– how a cheeseburger should be made."

This time, she waited for him to stand, then to start walking beside her. She continued on about the cheeseburger, trying to convince Jack that it was the best he would ever have. The only thing he was convinced of was that her insomnia was finally reaching her head. 

"You're so annoying," Jack said woefully. 

"Speak for yourself. Do you have any idea how sore my legs are from doing laps because of your trap? I think even coach is ready to kick you in the head."

"Coach likes me just fine."

"Please, you play nice around him but he's not stupid. That's lesson two."

"What was lesson one?"

"Neither am I."

Jack resisted rolling his sore eyes back into his skull. It was easier to swallow the thought that, just for that night, he didn't have to push back so much.


	2. Rags

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's losing his grip and Kevin reminds him to be a little human and let it happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this out of character? Do I care?

"Go away, I'm going to get it."

"Not if you don't try."

"What the fuck do you think I've been doing for the last three hours?"

A bark of his own scratched Kevin's throat, but it fizzled, like the end of a candle wick. There was no more wax to burn. He dragged a hand down his face and inhaled deeply, like he had a press meeting in two minutes and his entire team on the verge of murder behind him. It was a practiced moment, yet it always took so much energy.

Kevin started, "You're too tired. If you keep going like this-"

Jack's stick nearly whacked Kevin in the head as he rounded on Kevin. "If you're going to be distracting, leave!"

It was impossible to do with gloves on, but Jack was scrubbing over one eye, half hidden where his hair had fallen from the helmet.

History echoed in Kevin's temple, like a fist knocking on the door of his past and then smashing right through it. Distantly, he heard himself, a disembodied voice in the corners of the dark. He was yelling at a new Raven to get out of the court while he was practicing. The Raven, who's name he didn't care enough to remember, was holding a bottle of water out to him, eyes wide with something he now recognized from Jack. And Kevin was yelling at him.

Kevin shook his head, and the fleeting memory fled.

"I'm not trying to be distracting. You can be here all day doing the same thing over and over again but if you don't do it at a pace you can keep up with, it's never going to stick." Kevin held up a hand just as Jack's jaw cracked to speak. "No, you can't keep up with any pace. You can build up to anything, though. Now are you going to let me help you or are you going to scream at me again?"

When Jack was silent, Kevin reached for the racquet he held. There was a strange trepidation when reaching for Jack. They'd never seen him throw a punch, bloody thirsty as he was on court, but entering his personal space was like meeting a growling dog with a snapped chain leash. He was predictable when he was making noise, and Kevin had grown almost accustomed to hearing him try and out lung everyone, but Jack silent was unnerving.

Kevin adjusted to this slightly smaller racquet. Jack had insisted on a longer stick than he could manage and Kevin had found that almost promising. Anyone who could carry their weight and more was worth his time. Almost in a nauseous wave he wondered how long he'd been encouraging this.

Kevin made big gestures to make sure Jack caught them, squaring his footing and bouncing on his knees. His fingers wrapped around the racquet, held up for Jack to follow the movement. The concentration behind Jack's eyes was admirable but Kevin had long since noticed it wasn't always on the present, nor did he follow specifics well. He caught general ideas and filled in the rest. It was so, so infuriating, and a waste of time, but it wasn't for lack of trying. If Jack was going to work himself to the bone, Kevin wasn't going to watch it happen with no positive outcome.

"You want to hold it like this," Kevin was saying, keeping the racquet firm by his body. The length of it spread past him like wings; this racquet really wasn't that different from his own. "When you've got the ball and someone is coming at you, don't try and go through them the first round. You've got to think quicker, you've got to see where they're going before they do."

Instead of the petulant response Kevin wholeheartedly expected, Jack said, "Won't they be doing the same thing for me?"

"Exactly. That's where the play comes in. You look like you're going right, they go right, you fake. They follow, fake again. You're trapped, pass the ball. If you can't, then you ram them down with everything you've got."

When the racquet was back in his hands, Jack was loud again, if only in presence alone. Kevin understood.

"Don't think about if it's going to well. Know that it is," he said.

Jack's look was enough; he didn't believe in miracles. It was impossible to make a blind man see but that didn't mean he could tune up everything else he's got. When Jack copied the maneuver, it was sloppy and his foot was too far to the left and his hands were too close together. Kevin fixed all of this. In his mind’s eye, Jack's seething frustration, his rub-reddened eyes were so familiar he could have greeted the image like an old neighbor. Of course, familiarity did not always been positive acquaintance. As he kicked Jack's foot to the left, he drowned his younger self out and decided that it was Jack's now. The hardship of needing to do it, more than needing to breath or eat or rest. That didn't mean he had to leave Jack alone with it.

"Not like that. Or that. Raise it up. Up. Up. Too far up. Just start again, and don't raise the racquet until-"

A strangled noise, like ripping wet cloth, came from Jack. He went rigid, as though every muscle in his body had tightened, every nerve on edge. Then all at once he fell apart. Kevin was sure he was going to throw the racquet again but it sat loosely in the limp curl of his hand, dangling by his side like a white flag. Kevin used to hate quitters until he nearly became one. Jack's eye visor was up but the way his head hung hid the sweaty shine of red on his face. There were exactly two other times Kevin had seen something so defeated, not counting those he'd won victory over on court, because this defeat was not with anyone else. It was within himself, and it was caving him in like a sheet falls across a bed.

"Jack."

"What's wrong with me?"

It could have been the way his voice cracked, split open at the seams from constant overuse. Few times had Kevin caught Jack off guard, but he had to have the strongest vocals on the team with the way his voice always held. Until now. It could have been the way he sounded, like how flimsy thick plastic felt under one's palm. Giving in under weight and reverberating like a ripple on a pond, but scarier, because water wasn't solid. Water wasn't fragile, nor was Jack. And yet. He didn't even have the energy to be mad at himself.

Maybe it was the words themselves, familiar like using a pair of scissors was familiar, or knocking someone's hand trying to eat dinner at a table. They were familiar in a way that few people felt, and all of them felt damned. Kevin had never said them but they were filed away somewhere within him, somewhere people who knew better had pried open and said them for him. Words can't hurt me, some ignorant vessel who thought life was easy might yell out his window at paparazzi as he sped past. That could be true, but when the words came from inside you, who knew what they were really made of?

What it really was was the way he held the Exy racquet. His fingers were so light around it but he was refusing to let it drop. He'd battered the thing to bits yet he still wasn't giving in.

"You're arrogant," Kevin said, but quietly. He wasn't spitting the flaw at Jack, he was embodying it.

Jack flinched, or stifled himself. Something that looked an awful lot like hiding.

Kevin had the strongest urge to check a mirror. He wanted to look at himself and be reminded that the past wasn't lurking around every corner, in every striker he recruited. It wasn't waiting for his footing to slip. But that would mean leaving Jack, and experience, memories, suggested otherwise. Jack himself was begging him to stay, in that way children do when they look like they can't fend for themselves. Kevin was going to say something, anything, but Jack beat him to it. "I have to be here."

Well, yeah. Kevin could have told him that. As much as he fought every single Fox to get away, as worthless as he could be in practice, Jack had chipped every claw to stay. He was trying, he just didn't understand that it was too forced.

"You won't get kicked off the team just because you can't-"

"I'm not going to be useless," Jack said, sharper than he looked. He deflated again, though, becoming even less than before. "If I can't do even this, I'm useless, and if I'm useless, what's the point? Why am I here if I can't do it right?" He was looking at Kevin but not in the eye. It hadn't escaped Kevin's notice that he always seemed transfixed by the tattoo but he never mentioned it, nor did he now. It was hardly a new feeling to be looked at.

Kevin swallowed; that wasn't his question to answer. What's the point? The point was to rise. The point was to fall, then get back up feeling stronger. The point was to play with the people that saved his life. The point was to make his dad proud. The point was to keep going because even after someone finally taught him how to stop he didn't want to.

"Why do you play?" Kevin asked instead. "If you feel like you can't be here, why come here in the first place?"

Irritation sparked in the pools of Jack's eyes, electric in a way Kevin had no intentions of getting struck by. But it was Jack. "There's nothing else."

"Nothing?"

Jack barely shook his head but Kevin didn't need to ask twice.

"It's like you get to a point where you think there's something else out there, and then you just fall back and realize even if there was, you don't want it," Kevin said.

Jack nodded.

"I've given it too much, and now I'm terrified," and the word crumbled like a dust beaten moth, almost as silent. "I'm terrified there's nothing left of who I am, or if I ever was ever anyone worth being at all. There's nothing left behind me, and every time I try to move forward, it's just another tripwire."

Jack looked wide eyed with guilt up at Kevin, then away in a flash. There was something animalistic about his eyes, framed in a tangle of hair and sweat. Like a frightened animal who knew its own fate; he did not quite look like Jack.

"I know," Kevin said, rushed, struggling to keep up with himself. "I mean, I don't know what happened to you, why you're here. Honestly, I don't want to. But I have no doubt that you're a Fox, and your place is right on this court. You've barely earned it but it's waiting for you, and it's going to keep waiting. Just take a deep breath, Jack."

He meant it literally, wanting to put a harness on the infamous temper before it woke again. Jack's look was speculative, but he obeyed, and finally the grip on the stick tightened.

Kevin continued, "Don't drag up your past. Don't let it follow you around and don't sift through the rubble trying to make sense of it. This," Kevin pointed to the racquet, "is not all you are. While you're on this team, you can be a part of it."

"Not if I can't play right," Jack countered. "The only reason you can't play right is because you don't live right. When was the last time you slept?"

"I slept last night."

"Okay, when was the last time you slept more than three hours?"

Being scolded rarely actually got through to Jack but now his lip pouted, not quite a sneer.

"That's right, don't think people don't notice."

"Or Allison told you."

"Allison doesn't tell me shit," Kevin said flatly. "You can't play because you're too wrapped up in not being able to play, and trying to fix it yourself is only making it worse."

Kevin took a deep breath, and he noticed Jack did too. With relief like a prayer, he thought, Progress.

A twinge of discomfort made his heart unsteady because he didn’t so often offer it, but still Kevin said, "I know you have to get better. I know. But you can't do it over night. Trust me."

It felt silly to say those words to Jack. Trust wasn't in his nature, having been lost with common sense and manners. He didn't disband it, but seemed to take a breath for himself, and Kevin knew he was back.

Kevin couldn't begin to imagine who Jack was where he came from yet he'd seen so much of himself in the breakdown he'd just witnessed it was almost enough to make his teeth ache. It was futile to tell Jack that he could make it, that he still had years to get through. It was futile to convince a rag to walk. But Jack wasn't a rag, and Kevin wasn't going to teach him to walk.

He checked the grip on the Exy racquet before asking, "Do you want to try again?"

He watched Jack's eyes flicker over him like he was a game screen and the options were final. Jack thought he was asking if he wanted to stay or leave for good. Kevin didn't correct him.

"Yeah. Yeah, show me again."

**Author's Note:**

> upside down smiley face emoji


End file.
